ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN: Country reports

CRIN, with partners, has carried out a collaborative project seeking to establish how children can access the justice system in their countries. By this we mean the status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the national law of each country around the world. We mean how the law treats children involved in legal proceedings, the legal means available to challenge violations of children’s rights, and the practical considerations in challenging violations using the legal system. With the data and information collected, we have compiled a report outlining the ways that national legal systems can be used to combat violations of children’s rights, and the ways that children can use the law to assert their own rights. We have also identified where the law falls short, and where legal systems are designed in ways that make it difficult or impossible to combat abuses of children’s rights.

The focus has been on legal remedies as the most direct means of challenging rights violations, but they require specialist knowledge and expertise and can be very complicated for people without legal training. Having carried out this research and published our report, Rights, Remedies and Representation: A global report on access to justice, we hope to help children, their families and local NGOs in engaging with their national legal systems to challenge children’s rights violations.

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CRIN would like to express our thanks to the many lawyers and NGOs that have supported this work and without whom this project would not have been possible: White and Case LLP, DLA Piper, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, Emery Mukendi Wafwana and Associés, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Confluent Law and CRIN. Each report is individually credited. Thanks also go to Translators Without Borders who have translated many of the reports produced as part of this project.